Don’t Forget Your Upholstery!

Being that we are a carpet cleaning company, carpet cleaning may be the first and only thing that comes to mind. We are experts when it comes to all things carpet cleaning, but we also offer a variety of other services as well. Our hot water extraction cleaning method, using truck mounted units helps provide us with the ability to provide the deepest cleaning possible for all services that we provide. Along with carpet, we can clean tile and grout, synthetic upholstery as well as synthetic area rugs, using this method. Of all of those services, upholstery cleaning seems to be the most likely to be looked over. Unfortunately, most customers do not even think about having their upholstery professionally cleaned. Just like your carpet and tile, your in home upholstery is subjected to normal wear and tear. While vacuuming regularly will help to keep your synthetic upholstery furniture in good shape, any upholstery that is subjected to standard usage will need regular professional cleanings to maintain a good look and feel for a longer period of time. Professional cleanings completed during regular intervals will help you to get the most out of your upholstery.

The IICRC or Institute of Inspection Cleaning and Restoration Certification, has some basic information and guidelines to help consumers properly care for their Carpet, Upholstery or and Hard Surface flooring. The recommendation for regular maintenance that can be carried out by anybody within their home, is regular vacuuming and immediate treatment of any type of spill. If there are some crumbs or dirt that are spilled onto the upholstery, you would want to vacuum that up nice and quickly to help prevent any of it from being ground into the micro gaps between the upholstery surface fibers. Even furniture that is not used too often still needs to be vacuumed regularly. The recommendation for a not too often used piece of upholstery, is to vacuum weekly. The process of regular vacuuming will help to prevent the buildup of contaminants across the surface of your upholstered furniture. There are things floating around in the air within your home that are seemingly invisible to the naked eye that can come to rest on your upholstered furniture. Over time, these contaminants can compile and compound themselves within the surface fibers of the upholstered furniture within your home. This can cause an uncomfortable surface, a look of discoloration, hard to remove matted areas and even permanent damage.

Promptly attending to a spill on your upholstered furniture can also make a massive difference in the overall look and feel throughout the life of your upholstered furniture. It is very common for upholstered furniture to regularly be used for leisure and relaxing. Often, this means sitting or laying on the upholstered furniture while enjoying some food or drink. No matter how careful you or your guests are, it is inevitable that there will be a spill or two. Sometimes the spill may be wine or spaghetti sauce, which triggers an immediate response due to the inherent fear of permanent staining. Other times, the spill may be from a substance that does not seem to be as destructive as a deep or bright red substance. This would typically garner a more relaxed or lackadaisical response. This could lead to a spill that does not look too bad turning into permanent discoloration over time. While a professional hot water extraction cleaning service is incredibly highly effective, permanent damage cannot be reversed. The best way to help prevent permanent damage would be immediate attention to any spill, no matter the source. The best way to treat an unfortunate spill on a piece of upholstered furniture, is by properly removing as much of it as possible, before calling a professional.

If you are treating a spill on your upholstered furniture, step one would be to remove as much as possible, but in a safe manner. The safest way to remove a spill just after it has happened is to dab the spill in question with a clean rag. When a food spill occurs, you would want to pick up and remove any solid items that were part of the food spill. Try to do this as carefully as possible, in an effort to avoid the possibility of forcing some of the food deeper into the upholstery fibers. The dabbing or blotting process to remove the spill is incredibly important. When you are dabbing or blotting the spill, you are cleaning it up while mostly avoiding any possibility of making the spill worse. If you rub a spill, whether it is a liquid or if it is food, you might actually be forcing the spill deeper into the fibers. Rubbing is typically a first instinct, but rubbing the spill can actually make the spill much worse than it has to be. The best way to approach simple stain treatment is dabbing or blotting. When you dab or blot a spill, you are letting your cloth do the work without causing any more damage than is necessary. To properly dab or blot away a spill, you would simply lay your cloth across the surface of the area and let it soak up as much of the spill as possible. Once it has picked up as much of the spill as possible, you can choose a dry portion of the cloth to lay back down over the remaining spill affected area. If the cleaning cloth is fully wet and cannot absorb any more of the spill, and there is still more to clean up, you will need to get a new cloth and repeat. Once you have used the cloth to absorb most of the spill, you can reevaluate the situation.

If you feel as though the spill warrants more immediate treatment, there is a concoction of household items that can be mixed and used as a safe, go to cleaner. You can mix equal parts water and white vinegar, then add a little dish soap and mix in a bowl. You can use this to try and remove any of the left over portions of the spill that are still visible. If you can put the mixture into a small spray bottle, that would help to make the application easier. If not, you would just want to make sure you take extra caution when applying the solution mixture. If the solution mix of vinegar, water and dish soap is in a bowl, you would want to lightly apply it to the upholstered furniture. You can apply it out of the bowl by lightly and slowly pouring some of the solution directly on top of the spill. If you feel unsure about lightly pouring a little bit of the solution directly out of the bowl, you could use a spoon to scoop out smaller amounts and apply it directly to the upholstered furniture. This would help you to be more accurate with your application, but it will take a bit longer, stay patient when applying. Once you have applied the mixture all over the surface of the spill, you only give it a minute or so to dwell. Then, you treat it as you did the original spill by taking a clean cloth and dabbing or blotting the solution off. Again, try not to rub the spill. Rubbing the spill, even at this point, can still cause more harm than good for your upholstered furniture. Once you have used your cloth and solution to clean the spill as much as possible, you can then take another dry cloth and dab or blot the wet area until it begins to feel dry. When you complete your home treatment, you should still go ahead and call a professional to come complete a thorough, heavy duty cleaning.

Whether you are treating a specific spill, or it is time for a recommended maintenance cleaning, this is the time to give us a call. Our technicians are trained, certified, experienced and friendly! Each of our service vehicles are equipped with large, heavy duty, top of the line Truck Mounted Units. These machines provide our technicians with the ability to perform a deep cleaning on any of your synthetic surfaces that is highly effective and yields great results. A good truck mounted unit will provide highly pressurized water that is heated to near boiling temperatures. While we do have a variety of tools, solutions and methods for treating various synthetic surfaces, the truck mounted unit is essentially the Holy Grail of the cleaning process. Most of the work is done by the water that is forced deep down into the fibers of your synthetic textile surface. This is a highly effective treatment process for the surface of your upholstered furniture.

So, when you have a spill, give us a call. If you have a good, spill free year, give us a call to set up your annual maintenance cleaning. When you do have your professional upholstery furniture cleaning service performed, do not forget about the protectant. We have an effective protectant that we can apply once the cleaning has been completed that can help to prevent future stains. Once applied, the protectant will help to keep any spill pooled up on the surface of the upholstered furniture for an extended period of time. This buys you extra time to clean up a spill before it sets into the fibers. Ask your technician about the upholstery protectant when he is cleaning for you and he would be happy to tell you all about the benefits of this effective service!